I've walked into the Beit Hamidrash plenty of times, for years; then why am I noticing this now!?
These frantic thoughts ran through my mind for the first time last month as I glanced around my school’s Beit Midrash, scanning its dimensions and trying to make sense of my flared up anxiety. It was the same, slightly cold, beige-carpeted prayer room, with tall windows that stretched up to the ceiling and overlooked the cracked sidewalk in front of the building. The room was now darkened because school hadn’t started yet, though much natural light from the cloudy day outside crept through the windowsills. The innumerable religious texts and miscellaneous books lay in the shadowy bookshelves, as usual. I walked into the room, just as I did everyday, but for some reason today I was different. On this day I was more alert and perceptive than ever before. As I walked into the room I noticed that the Aron Kodesh, the ark containing the Sefer Torah, was off center towards the boy’s side. Since the Machitza is taller than the Aron, inevitably the girls’ view of the Aron is obstructed.
Firstly, I would like to applaud Talya's ability to set the scene so beautifully. What nice adjectives and nouns she used to describe the setting. The reason she spends so much time on the setting is to convince the uneducated reader to believe her and therefore support her agenda. However, I am not an uninformed reader and Talya is a little liar. I have been in, and davened in that Beit Midrash many times, and the mechitza is so unbelievably low, you'd think it was a shul for midgets. Standing up on either side of the mechitza will give you a very nice view of everyone on the other side of it, something the students at "Yeshiva" Atlanta (now called AJA) most certainly take advantage of. I have even included a visual aid so you can see exactly how big of a liar Talya is. This picture is from the girls side of the shul. You can clearly see the Aron, sitting or standing. Even if it was on the boys side (it is in the middle for now), you would still be able to see it, as the mechitza is half glass and the wood only goes up to your hips if you are average height, leaving plenty of room for you to look over into the other section, and certainly enough room to see the Aron. Talya is average height.The room was always set up like this, but the misogynistic implications now became blatantly obvious to me.
"misogynistic"???? Like really? Which sex reads from the Torah? Which sex dances with the Torah on Simchat Torah? Which sex gets aliyot at the Torah? The answers to all those questions are "the men do". Why do you want the Torah in the middle? So you can pass it around for all the girls to hold (which is what they are trying to implement here)? This is making a mockery of the Torah. Do guys insist that the shabbas candles be put in view so they can see them? Do guys insist that they pass the shabbas candles around before the girls light them? That probably sounds funny, and that's because it is. Doing so would make a joke out of a mitzvah. So why is a Sefer Torah any different? I have no problem with the Aron being in the middle, but their reasons are not so "they can serve Hashem", they are so they can serve their own ideas, which I will get to later.
Now let’s go back in time. Just a few weeks earlier I recalled nervously sitting in my desk during class. I fidgeted uncomfortably while debating whether to ask my question. Eventually I raised my hand figuring I had nothing to lose.
“Rav, why do some shuls place the Machitza in different places,” I inquired curiously. My teacher looked at me inquisitively, trying to figure out my motivation. At the time I wasn’t talking about our Beit Midrash at school but rather the shul I attend every Saturday. He calmly answered, “well, many girls don’t even daven all the time so they should first work on themselves and then question the setup of the shul.”
This is not at all the answer that should be given to anyone attending this school. This Rabbi should just admit that he is an idiot and doesn't know the answer, instead of giving stupid answers which indeed, in this case sound highly misogynistic (in most cases when this word is used, it is used incorrectly, however when I use it, you can assume that it is used in the correct context). He basically said that girls are inferior, something that:
#1 isn't true
#2 is not something you tell a young girl who clearly is having questions about how she fits into Judaism. One can argue that this rabbi did not know this, however Talya asks a lot of questions in class and clearly, this is not her first question on women in Judasiam in his class. His only defense is that he is a lousy educator and still was unable to understand where Talya is at in her Judaism. Either way, both are grounds for him to be fired. However, based on my knowledge of this school and that we have established Talya as a dirty liar, it's quite possible that this story didn't take place exactly as Talya said. However, if it did, this Rabbi is quite the imbecile.
While his claim did have validity, for just like everyone else, I am tempted to talk in davening, I was shocked at his insensitivity to my feeling of exclusion during davening.
Correct Talya, this teacher is an imbecile and it's rather nice that you didn't call him out by name, a courtesy I certainly wouldn't have afforded him had I been in your position. And this was obviously not the Great Rabbi E, as he would never give such a retarded answer.
Later that week another teacher disregarded my concern with my role as a woman in Judaism by stating that “men and women have different roles.” While this was once again valid, I was growing increasingly frustrated with the unsatisfactory answers to my questions.
Although this is the factually correct answer, this is not the proper way to answer a girl who is clearly having trouble finding her role in Judasiam. Smicha doesn't give any of the required knowledge to be a teacher, social worker, advisor or much of anything at all, but I will discuss that in a later article. AJA most certainly needs a major overhaul in their Judaics department, starting with the sacking of Reed Travis. I will discuss him in the future, have no fear!
I didn’t understand why I was shushed when I sang proudly during davening and why I constantly felt that the only possible position for me during davening was a passive one. As I grew more jittery I knew that I needed to seek out the answers to my concerns.
More proof that AJA needs to get their rear in gear on their Judaics department. They can't provide answers to basic questions that modern-day Jewish teens might have? What use are they? They are SUPPOSED to be there for exactly that reason!
I don’t claim to be any expert on Halacha, Jewish law,
You certainly start talking like you are in a couple paragraphs.
and therefore knew the answer to my question would need to be answered by someone with higher authority. As I sought answers from reliable Modern Orthodox authorities
Oxymoron
that I felt understood my religious views,
No, Talya, those are your personal views on what religion should be. You can have whatever views you like, but don't call them Judaism, especially when they are just views parroted over from Lena Dunham. You can have a view of what you think Judaism should be, but just because you have Jewish parents doesn't mean that your views are necessarily "Jewish Views".
I realized that the question was more complex than I thought—there are many different valid opinions as to where to place the Aron Kodesh and the Mechitza in a place of prayer. Intrigued and perplexed by which interpretation felt satisfactory to me, I delved deeper into my research and became even more troubled.
Clearly, you are "becoming troubled" because your PERSONAL VIEWS aren't compatible with real Judaism and are coming to realize that.
You see, what I realized was that there was an underlying issue which was more concerning: the inability for the students at my school, as well as students in countless schools, to respect one another. While on the whole authoritative figures tried their best to answer my questions with care and respect,
The authoritative figures at your school are idiots as we've previously addressed, go to competent rabbis for real answers from now on....
many of my own peers scoffed at my concern of a woman’s involvement in prayer.
Your own peers appear to be excellent lie detectors. Look at yourself. Why are you doing this? In your entire article, up until now (we're almost at the end), You have not mentioned G-d's name once. The entire purpose of tefillah is for us to strive to connect with Hashem, to serve Hashem. Since this is an article all about Tefillah, the way which a Jew connects with G-d, don't you think that is an important idea to discuss? This is a great indicator that your purpose is to serve Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer and not to serve the Almighty, as is the whole reason we daven. Had you shown your peers how much you cared about Judaism by making sure to keep all the Mitzvos to the best of your ability and cared so much about serving Hashem, then I bet they would have had a lot more respect for you and your desire to serve Hashem. Clearly this was not the case.
Some of my peers were respectful, but those who weren't had no shame. In fact, on one occasion when a girl was given the sefer Torah during shachrit (the morning prayer service) and brought it on to the girls side to be kissed by excitedly awaiting girls, chaos ensued. Boys moved the Aron Kodesh back onto the boy’s side and sneered as the girls kissed the Torah. A few of the boys even walked out of the room because they were so offended. And when asked why they felt so uncomfortable, they responded “that’s just how I feel. I don’t need to have a reason, or be grounded in a specific tradition.” My curiosity about the setup of the Beit Midrash now became my secondary concern; the main issue was the blatant lack of respect.
You are victimizing yourself for the purpose of making the reader sympathetic to your "cause". In doing this, you show a complete lack of confidence in your argument and that anyone would take you seriously based on the merits of the points you bring up. And as I said, you're clearly not doing any of this to serve Hashem, you're doing this for political reasons, making a mockery out of Torah, so how do you expect the boys to react? They might not have been able to articulate it, but this is how they felt. This is how you would feel if the boys insisted on passing around the Shabbas candles for them to kiss before you could light them. Now we will see the first instance of G-d in this entire article.
Praying to God in a place of worship is a matter to be respected, and the lack thereof astounded me. While we all claim to be religious Jews arguing about different ways to pray, we were clearly lacking a fundamental concept that is at the core of Judaism, loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Respecting different opinions and allowing yourself to sympathize with those who are a different gender, religious denomination, or belief system is essential in Judaism.
No, it is not. This is another one of your personal views again which you pulled out of your hat. If your Hashkafa (I will write an article on this another time) isn't that of orthodox Judaism, you are wrong and are not following Judaism. Clearly the religious education is seriously lacking in this institution. If someone worships avoda zara, are we supposed to "sympathize" with them? Talya really needs to stop mixing up her personal views with what Judaism teaches.
Without the value of acceptance, the foundation of Judaism shatters. Human beings thrive on knowledge acquired from one another, and so we must open our ears to opinions that differ from our own. Now I know that during davening I sometimes impulsively whisper to my neighbor, but we all have room to grow in our connection to God. My weakness may be my inability to be silent for an entire school period, while my friend’s weakness may be his or her struggle with the laws of kashrut (dietary laws). Whatever it may be, we should strive to better ourselves with a foundation of mutual love and respect.
I might not be a halachic source but what I do know is that Modern Orthodoxy aims to include women within the realms of Halacha. This basis gave me enough of a motivation to delve into my research. I, along with the rest of my school, participated in a day of learning dedicated solely to studying the Halachic sources for how a Jewish place of worship should be set up. As we began to study the sources for where you place the Aron and Mechitza I felt empowered—finally I was utilizing the texts to understand the reasoning behind various opinions. Whereas before I was ignorant, now I was finally learning how to back up my opinions with textual support and sound both educated and intelligent. The day of learning was necessary for it dispelled common misconceptions and supplied us with knowledge, and subsequently powerful arguments. What I also noticed was that while opposing viewpoints were certainly present throughout the texts, they were respectful of one another. If these Halachic authorities were able to respectfully disagree, then so should we. We should learn from their example that in order to solve an issue, a mutual respect must be present. Without that foundation we crumble, but with it we thrive and prosper, soaring to new heights.
The difference is that these were all HALACHIC authorities. You are not. You try to find a way you can somehow make your personal views a part of Judaism, and in doing so, miss the whole point of Judaism. The purpose of Judaism (and Tefillah) is to serve Hashem, to nullify ourselves in front of Him. To make ourselves His servants. To carry out His will on the earth. When you were sitting there fighting with your peers, were you doing so leshem shamayim or leshem feminism?
This is not the first girl who I have met who claims that she is both an orthodox Jew and a feminist. However, I have never met a single one who promotes these ideas leshem shamayim. The fact that it took this girl so long to bring up G-d's name just proves my point even more. Those who promote these ideas are not promoting G-d's ideas, but their own ideas, and therefore such ideas should be regarded as garbage.
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